Sunday, October 24, 2010

I knew I'd like Chris and Megan as soon as they told me their wedding colors. Not necessarily because I'm an enormous fan of "Raisin"(a dark, purplish brown) and "Celery" green, but because they added "If we add peanut butter, we'll have Ants on a Log!"

Come to think of it, it must have subliminally affected my designs, because I drew them a cake in the same formation of the "log" cake that we made for Christopher and Santhi (a few posts down from this). While I didn't have any pictures to show them (Christopher and Santhi hadn't been married yet) I did sketch them up a little thumbnail of the layout.

They loved it as much as I did, so we went with that layout, their delicious color scheme, and added in ferns and frosting fiddle-heads to complete the look.

One minor detail...they don't make cake stands in that shape. So we enlisted "Magic Phil" to make us a beautiful oak stand in the shape of a "ladybug". I think the wood came from my sister in law's old dining room table. I love how that man recycles!

Sunday, October 17, 2010

My husband and I went to Paris for our 10th wedding anniversary. It was our first trip to Europe. When looking for a hotel, I wanted a room that made me realize I was in Paris as soon as I opened my eyes in the morning. While searching endlessly for the perfect accommodations, I was finally grabbed by the Hotel D'Angleterre on Rue St. Jacob. The room entrance was across an inner courtyard of the hotel, and it had a french painted tile bathroom, but what sealed the deal, was that the entire room was wallpapered in toile fabric. Actually fabric...actually where we were going to stay.

I swear, this is going somewhere.

When I met with Misha, she hadn't decided on many details for the wedding yet. We designed some rough sketches for her with the details to be filled in later. A month before the wedding, she arrived for a design session to finalize the cake. She showed me her amazing invitations, complete with a hand-sewn fabric flower that was so three-dimensional, that the invitations had to be mailed in beautiful little slate grey boxes, rather than envelopes.

We looked through her earlier designs, and saw that one of them incorporated horizontal fondant bands, and an oversized fondant flower as the focal point. That being the design that worked best, we messed around with what the fondant bands should look like. We played around with the background texture of the invitation, and were pretty happy with it. It wasn't until we were about to wrap everything up, that she mentioned her reception decor. She had ordered in bolts and bolts of toile upholstery fabric to have runners and napkins sewn for the tables.

Errrrrghhhh. Stop right there. Toile? Gimme.

I had just started messing around with screenprinting in frosting a couple of months prior, so all I could have shown Misha was a frosting Spider Man comic book to illustrate the technique. To avoid giving her pre-wedding nightmares involving super-heroes, I refrained from showing her that particular example. Luckily, she trusted me enough to let me go ahead with the screenprinting without seeing an actual sample. I love this girl. And her cake. Et Paris. Ooh, ooh, and those Nutella and almond filled giant crepes that they sell at every street corner...the view from Notre Dame, Sacre Coeur, Musee D'Orsay, Jardin Luxembourg, the fountain at St. Sulpice, St. Germaine des Pres, the bookstalls along the Seine, mimes...wait, not mimes, they can keep the freaky mimes.

DECORATOR'S NOTES:

The toile screen that we used on this cake is now for sale! We are excited to share this beautiful technique with other cake geniuses (evil or not).

Saturday, October 2, 2010

When I met with this couple, they requested a more sculptural, natural-looking cake. As we discussed the wedding further, it became clear that there was no other option for them, or me. It was a perfect marriage (excuse the pun) of cake and wedding. They would be married outside, with the reception in a room showcasing that same beautiful landscape through an entire wall of windows. The cake would need to bring the outdoors in. Funny, when I heard the word "sculptural", I instantly thought of a cake layout that I'd seen recently, and been dying to try. I sketched the layout on paper and they loved it too! Then, I took a chance and suggested that we make the cake look like tree trunks, complete with bark and tree rings on the tops of the tiers. They loved it, and even produced a copy of their invitation (self-designed) that had a concentric ring pattern motif that was a modern art representation of tree rings, even overlapping in a way that looked like a top view of the cake I had designed. Spooky. But AWESOME!We stole the color scheme from the invitations, added some flora and fauna, and we were ready to roll. Only question was how to top such a fabulous cake? I suggested a frosting bird's nest, Christopher thought a little house for the animals. I drew a little mushroom-capped gnome house (thank God for Google) and we had our topper.

Luckily, their wedding landed on one of the very few weekends of this summer where there was niether rain, nor sweltering heat. We set up the cake elevated above a bed of moss that they got for us, and even got to overhear part of the ceremony before we went on our way. Thanks to Graddy Photography for the enchanting opening image!